Brienne?

  Seven times she struck the flintstone against steel, red-hot sparks catching on the straw and driving away the veil of night. The breadth of her helped guard the tiny bloom of flame from being snuffed out by the wind screaming through the mountain pass.

  A bonfire would soon take its place, a sigh leaving her lips for the welcome heat.

  Her eyes found the red smear in the sky again, a sword carving open the heavens to spill their blood. Her constant companion in recent days.

  Her quest had only turned more treacherous once she won past the Bloody Gate, for the mountain clans of the Vale gave scant sway to honor. They were cutthroats. Scavengers. To break bread with them was to invite a dozen challenges and indignities that saw her break as many bones. And yet it would be a lie to say that some part of her had not grown fond of them.

  Not a one of them mocked her behind their cups as Brienne the Beauty. She had won other names from them instead, names as the Giant of Tarth and Sky-Hewn. A few even thought to name her a demon with eyes blue as old winter.

  Her quarry was the Mist Walkers as she knew now, a splinter clan of the Sons of the Mist said to be led by a witch kissed by fire, her name never whispered for it was thought to bring ill luck. And now after three moons she had found them.

  Her heart skipped a beat when she saw dark eyes and a familiar smile on the other side of the campfire, but it was gone as soon as she had rubbed at her tired eyes.

  It burned her cheeks that she was so heartsick.

  Securing her horse, a shaggy garron she had won off the chieftain of the Painted Dogs, and her swords, she buried herself under a nest of furs and let herself drift into slumber. That night she dreamed of a boy with hair red as rust again, caught in the pale branches of a tree he could not escape.

  The morn found her ascending the mountain again.

  She knew they already watched her, she wasn't a fool. By the time she walked their campfires, she found a procession waiting for her, the witch at its heart. Curls the color of a Dornish blood orange draped over her like a cloak might have, her features messily exaggerated by paint black as char.

  After a quiet breath, she eased a yellow sword free of its sheath for the first time, watching as it drank in the sun like a withered man drank water. "I'll have Bran Stark back from you."

  It only drew a wider smile from the tiny woman.

  "Such a queer sight that stands before us. Aye, a would-be knight of the Seven Kingdoms with a sword of blackest sorcery in her hands."

  Her hand tightened around its hilt. Her eyes raked across the others, men and women. There was one that stood taller than even her, a stone maul over his shoulder.

  "But you are not only that," the witch continued. "It is a line of kings you come from. Your fathers even call on themselves as the Evenstar still, but do you even remember why, m'lady?"

  The address was thick with mockery. "Why have you taken him if not for a ransom?" she asked instead. "The Starks are as old as they come."

  "'Cause old winter comes, girl. He's a part to play as we all do. However much we might loathe it." The witch neared her unafraid. "But you've heard those words before. Haven't you? How much do you truly know of the thing that's won your heart?"

  Brienne touched the edge to her throat. "I'll have the boy," she said heatedly.

  "Aye, you'll have him. Take him home to Winterfell if it please you."

  The words furrowed her brows. "What?"

  "I've kept him all I care to. The moons to come will leave me little time to play at a wet nurse." Those painted lips took up another wicked smile. "I'll make these mountains sing with the blood of Andals again, you'll see. Those thieves that dare name us thieves."

  Without a care as to the danger, the witch wiggled a finger to beckon her, her nails nearer to claws and bearing black runes.

  "Come. The little greenseer awaits you."

  A deep frown curved her lips, but it would be dishonorable to strike at a foe's back. She returned the sword to its sheath.

  It was a cave she was led into, a cave choked in the white roots and red leaves of a weirwood with a face grim as her grandfather's. Beneath its branches a boy slept with hair near the same color as its leaves, his arms curled around what could only be a direwolf. Its fur seemed like molten silver in the gloom, and its golden eyes watched them carefully.

  Greenseers she only knew from some half-remembered maester's lesson. It was the greenseers of the children of the forest that first carved faces into weirwoods.

  "Go, daughter of the Evenstar," she heard at her back. "And ware the towers." Though when she turned, the witch had already gone.

  It left her to hold a vigil with the wolf until Bran Stark would stir some hours after.

  His eyes were the same Tully blue as his lady mother's, though flecked with an uncanny red. "I dreamed of a knight bedecked in suns and moons," he whispered.

  A panic suddenly struck him as he looked around. Yet it was only them.

  "They've gone," she tried to soothe. "No harm will come to you so long as I still draw breath. I am Brienne of Tarth."

  "You're not a knight?" he asked skeptically, his eyes finding her two swords.

  "I am a woman," she said in answer.

  He gave a strange stubborn scowl as he stood. "If a thing like me can be a knight, so can you. And I will be a knight. I don't care what the stupid crow says."

  Her brows met again. "Crow?"

  The Stark boy turned even more stubborn for the question, stirring to his entrance with his great wolf on his heels. "I need to get to Robb. To warn him."

  "Lord Eddard would be none too pleased with me if I brought you into the fray. Nor your brother. Word has it he's passed the Redfort. He makes for Runestone."

  His shoulders hunched. "She knew it would be too late…"

  She felt her heartstrings tugged for his despondent tone. "Strongsong is nearer. We might send a raven to either castle."

  They left the cave and its weirwood behind, the campfires she spied earlier put out. The mountainside had become a haunt of ghosts.

  As the sun died, they made their own camp beneath a snowy canopy. The days had grown colder with every turn of the moon.

  Her charge stared up at the sky as she produced a fire. "I have seen it in a hundred dreams," he whispered lowly. "In one it beheld a sign. In another it unhinged like a serpent to swallow the world."

  Her eyes caught on the red sword in the sky more warily.

  Her thoughts still tangled together uncertainly. The bloodshed she worried after had never come. Yet why else had she been given a sword from a story?

  And the words the witch had thrown at her…

  Something wet pressed against her mannish hand. A snout. A pair of golden eyes stared into her own. "Has your wolf a name?" she asked.

  "Summer. All the stupid crow would show me was winter…"

  "Summer," she repeated. Already he dwarfed any wolf she had ever seen.

  He still gave a happy whine when she scratched him behind the ears.

  "I want to help Robb and Jon and Uncle Brynden," she heard. "I know it's stupid, I'm barely a squire, but I want to."

  "A knight is more than a name," she voiced. "Seeing it for folly and wanting to still is knightly."

  That was something she believed with all her heart.

  "I might not be a famous knight as your uncle," she continued even softer. "But I would teach you if you wish it. Something to occupy the days until I see you returned to Winterfell."

  He gave a smile for her words. A true one. Sometimes that was reward enough.

  The Sacrificial Lamb?

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Deep Den was a pale shadow of the Rock, a lesser seat for a lesser house. It was carved into a stunted hill, richer in silver more than gold, with a history that reached back no further than the coming of the Andals. Even its furnishings bore that stench of mediocrity. The Lyddens had filled their halls with soft silks and gilded trifles, as if such frippery would conjure up the grandeur they lacked.

  A scoff escaped him. Now he was reduced to waging a war from it. All as the world around him turned into a mummer's farce.

  The Targaryens had resurfaced in Dorne, a storm of letters sent to all the realm to announce it.

  The talk of dragons he discarded easily. Either it was a ploy or the work of fools, and he would not fall prey to either.

  The news from King's Landing had been no less vexing. The Grand Maester at least yielded some sense, the same as a child might have spoken to him.

  He shifted the parchment around. It had been a clever ploy from Stannis. In one move he had shorn Renly of much of his legitimacy in the stormlands, and that without a costly siege.

  A pity then that he had not been so decisive at Dragonstone.

  He turned his attention back on the war closer to him. Tarly and the Hightower heir had grown bolder of late, sneaking one raiding party after another into the westerlands. Recompense, they named it, for the price the Reach had paid for naked treachery and anarchy.

  Some of those excursions he had made them pay richly for, but he only had so many men to deliver such chastisement.

  How long could he expect to hold Deep Den if it continued? A year? Two? Each village or hamlet put to the sword or stretch of farmland burned and riven with salt made his supply more precarious. The soldiery would only subsist on meager rations for so long before desertion decimated the ranks.

  A weary sigh passed his lips. Even if Baelish's ploy were successful, it was doubtful that he would see more than ten or twenty thousand of Tarly's men sent elsewhere. He needed the Dornish to do more than crown a boy or the ironborn to choose a king with wits enough to reason with.

  Vain hopes, both of them.

  Prince Doran would wait until Renly was at Casterly Rock, if only to spite him, and this Victarion Greyjoy that was like to take his brother's crown had already proven himself as grand a fool as hom. When this war was finished and his grandson's seat secured, he would see the isles scoured.

  The rest of the morn saw him poring over maps. If he could not hold Deep Den, he would not wait to lose it.

  He heard the creaky door. "Tywin."

  Kevan stood in the gloom, pale as a ghost. A rare flicker of apprehension touched him for the sight. "News of Jaime?"

  "Cersei," his brother whispered instead. "Genna has sent word from Casterly Rock…"

  Every word read left him colder. His daughter had always possessed a touch of madness, but this…

  The parchment crumpled in his hand. "It will be the silent sisters for her. She has left me no other choice."

  The thought burned him. He would have to see it done himself.

  His eyes found the mass of maps strewn over the desk again. "You will remain here and see that the work begins, Kevan. If we cannot hold Deep Den, we must make it Tarly's tomb."

  His loyal brother touched a hand to his heart. "I will."

  He dared not take more men than they could spare. The engineers would need at least three moons to see it done, five at the worst. If the Tyrells took Deep Den without a ruinous price, it was just as like they had lost the war.

  He and a score knights rode hard for Casterly Rock within the hour.

  The comet in the sky shadowed their path night and day, a thing clad in Lannister red. Many of the men believed it a fortuitous sign. Superstitious foolishness, he knew, but he would not gainsay their higher spirits. If a streak of fire made them ride harder and fear less, it was a resource like any other.

  Finally, the Rock crested the horizon in the west.

  It sat like a lion couchant, head turned for the sea, and high enough to have made Deep Den seem a dwarf beneath it. Even from a distance it was as though the earth itself bowed under the might of his House.

  His grandson he soon found in its throne room, Cersei with him. A mummer's crown sat upon her head.

  "Is there not a war to fight, Father? To what does your king owe the pleasure of your visit?"

  He raked across the cavernous room, his sister's eyes fixed on Cersei. Her weasel of a husband did not know whether to cower at him or his daughter.

  Stafford approached him. "Lord Tywin—"

  He silenced his cousin with a stare that he soon turned on Cersei.

  "I should have sent you to the silent sisters the day we returned to Casterly Rock," he said, his voice a low, dangerous rasp. "Slaughtering septons and septas…" He shook his head of the folly. "Confine my daughter to her rooms."

  "By what authority do you command your queen?" she asked, dripping with a sickly sweetness. "You are no longer the Hand of the King, Father."

  "Yes, I rather believe that would be myself now."

  His wretched son had appeared with a mocking smile. He should have known he would have some part to play in this foolishness.

  "Not only would you make a slaughterhouse of your mother," he hissed, the words like frost on his tongue. "You would see all I have built turn to ash in our hands as well."

  The creature snickered like a born fool. "You've done more in that pursuit than I could in a thousand years. I am merely the steward of its ruins."

  Tywin turned his eyes on his grandson. Five Kingsguard surrounded the throne, white cloaks starker in the gloom of torchlight. "Your mother and uncle would lead us all to ruin, Your Grace. Put an end to this folly."

  The boy only stared back at him frightened as a mouse. Was this what they had come to? A king who could not even command his own tongue?

  "So be it. See my son and daughter to—"

  His words died as the very earth threatened to give way under them. The ancient roots of the Rock groaned, a sound of stone grinding against stone that drowned out the world. When it would calm, a horror loomed behind Cersei. A yellow thing that towered over the room, with three eyes and a smile that seemed to shift like maester's paint.

  "Do you see now, Father? My husband stands behind me. What stands behind you but children with toy swords?"

  His knightly retinue stirred uncertainly behind him. The sound of steel rasping against leather was fraught with hesitation.

  "A trick," he hissed again, though the scent of sulfur and bruised stone filled his lungs. "A mummer's farce."

  "It would be some mummer that could make the earth quake," the dwarf jested.

  "You will not see it even when it stares you in the eye." His daughter stirred nearer, her queer eyes and uncanny smile only weakening the resolve of his retinue further. "You are not made for the new Age of Heroes to come."

  He could not show the same weakness to them. "Take her."

  The world shuddered as the thing shifted behind his daughter again, its own garish smile stretched wider. He heard the clatter of swords thrown down.

  It was folly. All folly.

  "Take my father to his rooms," his treacherous daughter continued. "Afford him every luxury that befits the Lord of Casterly Rock."

  He stared into her eyes, and naught but madness stared back. "The Tyrells will see us all dead, you stupid girl. I should have taken you in hand the day your mother perished."

  Her nails red as blood tickled his throat a moment. It was all mummery.

  "Solomon will build us a kingdom of sorcery all their swords and lances could never match." A trickle of warmth traced a path down his throat. "And you, my lord, are instrumental in it."

  Ser Mandon Moore approached him next, and Tywin threw his sword down also. He was not his other fool son.

  When all this fell on their head, perhaps there was something that might be salvaged still…